Free the Berkeley 4.4!
Click on any of the above pictures to view larger versions.
About 6 months after the University of California at
Berkeley started shipping ``Networking Release 2'' (Net 2),
it was sued by UNIX Systems Laboratory (USL) to halt distribution.
To rally support for continued release of Net 2,
Marshall Kirk McKusick commissioned this T-shirt.
In its original form, the shirt showed the daemon
skewering a deflated AT&T deathstar.
A few months later, AT&T sold USL to Novell,
so the skewered logo was changed to the diamond shaped USL logo
(since Novell had bought USL well after the suit was
underway, it seemed unfair to parody Novell -- indeed Novell
decision makers moved quickly to settle once they took control of USL).
There was a limited printing of approximately 100 shirts
that had only the artwork (no text under it) that were made
available to the people who that helped in defending Net 2.
A contest was held at the January 1993 Usenix conference
to pick a slogan to put under the artwork.
The winning entry was made by John Gilmore,
who suggested ``Free the Berkeley 4.4!''.
Approximately 2000 of these shirts were sold.
The artwork was done by Carol Peel.
Next: Net 2 USL 0
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